In integrated circuits, particularly CMOS integrated circuits, there is a need to have long signal lines to route a signal from one portion of a chip to another portion of the same chip. In order to conserve power on signal transitions, it is desirable to either reduce the capacitance on the line and/or the signal amplitude on the line. With CMOS integrated circuits, the gate capacitance is large, and cannot easily be reduced. Therefore, it is desirable to drive these long routing lines with a reduced amplitude swing signal. However, this requires special driver circuits.
After transmission, these small swing signals must be converted back into full swing signals. Existing small swing to full swing conversion circuits, generally called receivers, generally use a substantial amount of power during static states, that is, when there is no small swing signal transition at the receiver input. Such substantial power dissipation can approach thirty to forty percent of the integrated circuit's total power dissipation. For integrated circuits designed for use with battery power supplies, the substantial power drain from the receiver circuit in stand-by mode is very undesirable. Therefore, a need has arisen for a signal receiver which uses little or no power in the stand-by mode.